"The Ball given by the Ministry of Communications last night in the new Waichiaopu Building was a great success in every way. Although only 1,500 invitations were sent out, more than that number of guests attended the Ball."--_Peking Daily News._ * * * * * [Illustration: IN THE ALMOST CERTAIN PROSPECT OF A STORMY SESSION, WHY NOT ADOPT THE "TERRACE" SYSTEM AS NOW USED AT THE ZOO?] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) I think I could best convey my impression of Miss ETHEL SIDGWICK'S work by quoting the advertisement of a popular magazine which used to proclaim that "these stories are different." All of Miss SIDGWICK'S are this, though you might possibly be hard put to it to say exactly how. It is chiefly an affair of style; there is about all of them a certain dignity of utterance that combines with their humanity to produce an effect wholly individual and rare. Take her latest example, _A Lady of Leisure_ (SIDGWICK AND JACKSON). There is really very little to arrest attention in the story itself; the characters are persons whom you could meet every day, but in Miss SIDGWICK'S hands they become creatures of extraordinary fascination. The result is a novel by no means easy to criticise; partly because one is left with the feeling (of course the most subtle compliment to any author) that the characters have fashioned it themselves. Time and again one seems to observe Miss SIDGWICK working towards some inevitable _scène-à-faire_, when bounce! off go her people on an entirely unexpected tack, which you must yet admit to be the very one they quite obviously would follow. Never was a cast so incalculably alive. Naturally for this reason its vagaries (they are almost all in love and generally with the wrong person) would take too long to recount in detail. I can only state my personal preference for the group that consists of the heroine, _Violet Ashwin_, her father, the fashionable physician, and her brainless but quite wonderful mother. I plump for the _Ashwin_ household in short as a really brilliant contribution to the homes in modern fiction. I don't say you will find their charm easy of assimilation. The society of such clever and elusive folk as _Violet_ and her father is bound to be hard going at first for the general. But _Mrs. Ashwin_--oh, she is a joy, a marvel, an exasperation! You will delight to read about her. * * * * *